Chip Ferguson is the founder of Smooth Closing in Austin, Texas, a direct to seller home buying operation he built after spending eight to nine years as a full time online poker player. He went from flipping houses completely solo to running a team of nine in office and two overseas, with Q2 of this year landing 50% above his previous revenue record.

This conversation walks through the whole arc, including the single hire that doubled his deal count in 12 months, why standard operating procedures were the hinge that changed everything, and the hairy deal niche most investors walk away from. If you are a solo operator who suspects you have hit your personal ceiling, this episode shows you exactly what the next step looks like.

Timeline Summary

[1:30] – Leon welcomes Austin based CG member Chip Ferguson to the show

[2:41] – What Smooth Closing buys today, mostly wholesale with flips on rural and messy title situations

[5:01] – From Ohio to Northwestern, a school he picked by sorting national rankings

[5:45] – Catching the online poker boom in college and going pro before he turned 21

[8:25] – Biggest single night win, worst pot lost, and why the losses stick harder

[10:02] – Playing 30 tables at once online versus the slower grind of live tournaments

[12:19] – Buying his first duplex in 2009 and getting scammed by his first contractor

[13:35] – Entering wholesaling in 2014 by transcribing a podcast role play into a seller script

[19:22] – Doing all of it alone, acquiring, project managing the GC, and listing the flips himself

[21:39] – Hitting 36 deals two years in a row and reading that as proof of his ceiling

[22:38] – One acquisitions hire takes the business from 36 to 65 deals in the first 12 months

[25:37] – How lending to Sean Grabow sight unseen led to the introduction to Collective Genius

[28:49] – The SOP problem, when every process lives inside two founders’ heads

[32:15] – Bringing dispo in house after years of handing deals to a third party company

[37:14] – The hairy deal niche, chasing broken chains of title and estranged heirs nobody else finds

[42:47] – Best quarter ever in Q1, then Q2 comes in 50% above the previous record

5 Key Takeaways

1. Hire What You Are Not Good At — Most operators are their own best salesperson, so acquisitions is usually the last seat to fill. Chip was honest that talking to sellers was not his strength, hired for it, and nearly doubled the business in a year.
2. A Repeated Number Is a Ceiling — Doing 36 deals two years running told him the constraint was him, not the market. When your output stops moving no matter how hard you work, that is a capacity problem and not an effort problem.
3. Process Beats Instinct at Scale — Running everything from memory works right up until you hire someone. Without documented procedures you will keep churning through people and blaming the hires for a gap you never filled.
4. Be the Worst Person in the Room — Chip joined CG specifically because everyone there was doing more volume than he was. The upside of being the least experienced person in the room is that everything you need has already been solved by someone sitting near you.
5. Nobody Chases the Hairy Deals — Broken chains of title, estranged siblings on an inherited property, owners who cannot be found. Chip closed 10 to 15 of these because most investors will not do the research, which makes it one of the least competitive deal sources available.

Links & Resources

• Collective Genius Community — https://explorecg.com
• Smooth Closing — https://www.smoothclosing.com
• Chip Ferguson on Instagram — https://instagram.com/thechipferguson
• Chip Ferguson on Facebook — https://facebook.com/thechipferguson
• Email Chip directly — [email protected]
• BiggerPockets Podcast — https://www.biggerpockets.com

Enjoyed This Episode?

If Chip going from 36 deals on a whiteboard to a team of eleven hit close to home, send this to the operator in your life who keeps saying they are too busy to document anything. The hairy deal conversation alone is worth a second listen, especially if you have let a title issue kill a contract this year. Follow the show, leave a rating and review, and head to https://explorecg.com if you want to be in the room with investors like Chip.